V-Tech Student speaks: Unarmed and vulnerable

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Bradford B. Wiles
Wiles, of New Castle, is a graduate student at Virginia Tech.
On Aug. 21 at about 9:20 a.m., my ...

V-Tech Student speaks: Unarmed and vulnerable

Unarmed and vulnerable

Bradford B. Wiles

Wiles, of New Castle, is a graduate student at Virginia Tech.

On Aug. 21 at about 9:20 a.m., my graduate-level class was evacuated from the Squires Student Center. We were interrupted in class and not informed of anything other than the following words: "You need to get out of the building."

Upon exiting the classroom, we were met at the doors leading outside by two armor-clad policemen with fully automatic weapons, plus their side arms. Once outside, there were several more officers with either fully automatic rifles and pump shotguns, and policemen running down the street, pistols drawn.

It was at this time that I realized that I had no viable means of protecting myself.

Please realize that I am licensed to carry a concealed handgun in the commonwealth of Virginia, and do so on a regular basis. However, because I am a Virginia Tech student, I am prohibited from carrying at school because of Virginia Tech's student policy, which makes possession of a handgun an expellable offense, but not a prosecutable crime.

I had entrusted my safety, and the safety of others to the police. In light of this, there are a few things I wish to point out.

First, I never want to have my safety fully in the hands of anyone else, including the police.

Second, I considered bringing my gun with me to campus, but did not due to the obvious risk of losing my graduate career, which is ridiculous because had I been shot and killed, there would have been no graduate career for me anyway.

Third, and most important, I am trained and able to carry a concealed handgun almost anywhere in Virginia and other states that have reciprocity with Virginia, but cannot carry where I spend more time than anywhere else because, somehow, I become a threat to others when I cross from the town of Blacksburg onto Virginia Tech's campus.

Of all of the emotions and thoughts that were running through my head that morning, the most overwhelming one was of helplessness.

That feeling of helplessness has been difficult to reconcile because I knew I would have been safer with a proper means to defend myself.

I would also like to point out that when I mentioned to a professor that I would feel safer with my gun, this is what she said to me, "I would feel safer if you had your gun."

The policy that forbids students who are legally licensed to carry in Virginia needs to be changed.

I am qualified and capable of carrying a concealed handgun and urge you to work with me to allow my most basic right of self-defense, and eliminate my entrusting my safety and the safety of my classmates to the government.

This incident makes it clear that it is time that Virginia Tech and the commonwealth of Virginia let me take responsibility for my safety.

Seriously, the gentleman is right on, and I'm very glad he took the time to express his views. It's hard to argue with the guy who was there, even for the most deranged head-in-the-sand anti (though I'm sure they will).

A man fires a rifle for many years, and he goes to war. And afterward he turns the rifle in at the armory, and he believes he's finished with the rifle. But no matter what else he might do with his hands - love a woman, build a house, change his son's diaper - his hands remember the rifle.

At the time, a bill was being prepared for presentation to the Virginia legislature in its 2007 session.

The bill was ultimately killed in committee in early 2007.

The VA Tech spokesman, crowed that he was pleased that the bill was killed because the students, parents, and staff need to be able to feel safe on campus.

We should make sure that our legislators see this article often. I am sure that during the 2008 legislative session, the VCDL will make sure that all of the legislators get copies of this article as well wa quotes from VA Tech.

My belief is that because of their cowardice, the leadership of the Virginia legislature helped a murderer complete his assault.

By cowardice, I mean that the Republican leadership decided what committees would hear what bills. This particular bill was referred to what the VCDL calls the "Death Star" committee. This committee is comprised of a majority of members who are extreme ant-gun Democrats.

By refering the bill to this committee, the Republicans KNEW FOR A FACT that it would die. That way, they can still claim that they would have voted for it but it died in committee.

It's not the police's job to protect you or your family. It's only to provide for the security of society at large. They have two ways of doing this:

1) Responding to any threats and containing the situation, to prevent it from becoming any larger. We can see this in how they handle these gunman shooting incidents: they "lock down" everything, in order to contain damage.

This is exactly like how a Navy ship closes and locks hatches to flooded compartments in the event of battle damage to keep the ship from sinking, even when there's still living people in those compartments. They're sacrificed in order to save the rest of the ship.

In the shooting situations, the idea is to allow the gunman to do whatever damage that he will, but that it will be contained to certain rooms or buildings, and he won't be able to escape the authorities. The people trapped inside are written off.

This sounds cold and inhuman, but it actually makes sense if you look at it from the big picture, and the view that human lives are expendable (which they are when you're dealing with numbers: would you rather the gunman escape and kill 100 more people elsewhere? Just like you wouldn't let a ship sink with 1000 people just to save 3 people in a flooded compartment).

2) Capturing suspects after crimes are committed, investigating the crimes, and helping prosecute the suspects. This is all part of something called "punishment": it doesn't do anything to stop the crime after it's committed, but theoretically it serves to deter future crime by providing a disincentive to committing crime. Instead of just walking out of Wal-Mart with a big-screen TV in your arms, because you fear being arrested for theft, a thief will decide not to do that.

This punishment by society only works, of course, if the criminal is still alive to punish, and isn't so insane that he plans to take his own life anyway.

Obviously, the part that isn't present here is protecting individuals from criminals before it's too late. And that's not the police's fault: they can't provide everyone with an armed guard, or monitor every single person in a country to make sure they're not doing something illegal. Nor would we want that level of government interference in our lives. So it seems pretty obvious that the only rational thing to do is allow people to protect themselves, which of course means allowing them to carry firearms and other weapons.

I took an on line survey in this form and am now on the Brady bunches mailing list for stop the NRA this is my latest reply to them. I am not the most articulate person around but they tend to get my goat.

Their question was what are you doing to stop gun valiance in light of the VT shootings?

I am writing my Representatives to encourage them to do away with these stupid gun free zones. All they do is make collage campuses hunting preserves for mad men. If concealed carry had been allowed at VT and the national average of 1.5&#37; of the population legally carrying a concealed weapon held true, then at least 5 of the victims would have been in a position to defend themselves. Not to mention the others that were exposed to the threat.

Thank God for the U. S. Constitution and the NRA.

I figure ending it with thank God for the U. S. Constitution and the NRA. would be most disturbing to them. Mentioning God, U.S. Constitution and the NRA will send them into apoplexy

The Roanoke-Times, eh? That's the newspaper where Christian Trejbal wrote that scathing, anti-gun article for "Sunshine Week" to cast the bright lights on the evils of concealed-carry ... in addition to posting the damned database of Virginia licensees online.

Frankly, I'd prefer them to do a deep analysis of the worth of concealed-carry, by comparison to that Trejbal piece. That's probably being naively hopeful.

Perhaps this is part of their atonement for damaging the citizens of Virginia. Perhaps. Whatever else, this is a little ray of sunshine, indeed. Nice to see them at least considering alternatives points of view, now that it's viscerally seen as, literally, a matter of life and death. Too true.

If concealed carry had been allowed at VT and the national average of 1.5&#37; of the population legally carrying a concealed weapon held true, then at least 5 of the victims would have been in a position to defend themselves.

On a 2600 acre campus of 25000 students, assuming a 1.5% incidence of concealed-carriers (375 of 25000) amongst the population and ~30% of the students on-campus at exactly that moment, it's likely there would have been very few (if any) in the exact spot where the murderer committed his crimes. Certainly, 5 of the victims would not likely have been carriers themselves. I'd be willing to bet that even 10x that number wouldn't have provided any guarantee. Though, there is no avoiding the reality: disarmament of victims surely didn't help.